Should Haiku sever ties with Google / the CIA?

Off-Topic
1

First, I’m not here to debate what Google is.
Anyone with a basic level of understanding of the origin of the company, and its manipulation of human consciousness, is aware that Google is a CIA project.

Those who disagree can find many other places on the internet to applaud Google (the CIA). This thread is not the place for CIA / Google apologists.

The reason I raise the topic is that Haiku has clear financial ties to Google (the CIA). Specifically via the “Summer of Code” etc.

Although it is entirely possible that the CIA do not yet have a developer ingratiated into the core Haiku team, if the popularity of Haiku continues to grow, the CIA (Google), will use some known tactics to either backdoor, or “embrace, extend, extinguish” Haiku.

I am sure that intelligent minds on this forum understand: Any newly-emerging popular OS poses a threat to the CIA. For the simple reason that, if that OS is secure, then it becomes a closed-door system to the CIA.

The CIA (Google) does not like closed-doors.

What I’m flagging up here is that Google (the CIA) approach tech groups, like Haiku, as a ‘friend’ (ie an ‘investor’ or ‘donor’). Google then encourage a reliance on their donations / assistance. Then, at a critical juncture, the CIA (Google) will threaten to withdrawn funding if the project does not comply with their demands.

Google’s strategy is to create a resource dependency, and then use that dependency for control.

I suggest immediately breaking ties with the CIA (Google).

The other Google-strategy is harder to mitigate against: The CIA / Google will attempt to infiltrate the core team and insert backdoors and/or derail the project. This can be defended against by strict code-reviews.

In summary: Haiku has reached a point of interest where it is being targeted by Google (the CIA). I advise not letting them in through the front door. Their ‘donations’ are hostile. Don’t make the same mistake as other projects. Cut the CIA off now, before the dependency grows.

To restate my initial thesis: This is not a thread for those who are still naive to what Google is. You have vast swathes of the internet to peddle that delusion freely.

This thread is for a discussion of the brutal reality of Google (the CIA) and the threat they represent to all emerging new OS designers.

I send everyone good vibes. Keep going! Haiku is magic.

2 Likes
2

Every large corporation has ties with government and agencies, the problem is influence on project decisions and corruption through money in members.

Projects with a permissive license don’t have as many problems, unlike GPL licenses, where corporations try to influence and corrupt.

Summer of Code is a good initiative, but it aims to Google finding labor and other things, the GNU project, BSDs and others participate!

I suggest you look at this link, it talks about licensing influence issues:

https://unixsheikh.com/articles/some-of-the-problems-with-the-gpl.html

3

I think there is a good debate to be had about distancing Haiku from the “Big Tech” establishment. Computing has indeed part of the industrial military complex from day one, and I gather university computer labs were blown up by students during the Vietnam war because of their role in operational analysis.

I hope this thread is allowed to proceed till we see where it is going. The OP’s focus on CIA has unfortunately given the thread a whiff of black helicopters and tinfoil hats. Perhaps change the title?

2 Likes
4

The Haiku project is already rather independent,which is great.
There was a time when Google Fonts (which is GDPR-uncompliant spyware) was embedded in the Haiku main website, the search bar would redirect you to Google and the default search in the browser was also Google.
Luckily that has all changed in favor of self-hosting fonts and using DuckDuckGo as search (which is also not really great,but at least not Google).
Taking some little money from the billions that Google owns,and putting it into development of open-source code that improves core functionalities and gets reviewed by long-time contributors is something I don’t really see as a problem,there’s not much Google could manipulate at this point.
Talking about Google and Haiku,one minor change that I would wish for is using some GDPR-compliant 2-click solution for loading Youtube nonsense in the forum,instead of directly embedding it into the thread with no option to disable that.
Thanks god there’s uBlock Origin!

Besides that,I must say that I see Micro$oft as a much bigger threat to free and open software compared to Google nowadays.
Micro$oft controls the worlds biggest code hosting platform,that is a proprietary walled garden and doesn’t allow you to interact in any way without an account.
Micro$oft also controls NPM,the NodeJS package registry (which is unrelated to Haiku,but very much related to my web development hobby).
Micro$oft also controls V$Code,which has unfortunately become one of the most popular editors,despite being some Electron webapp nonsense,and while there’s a libre fork,the edition that at least 90% use is proprietary and contains tons of tracking.
Micro$oft also controls donations to open-source projects with GitHub sponsors,which they made free (at least for now…) so that people,again,use their walled-garden instead of alternative solutions like Liberapay,Patreon,OpenCollective and so on.
What I’d really love to see is Haiku distancing from Micro$oft,using GitHub as a read-only mirror at maximum,better not at all and self-host the Haikuports stuff or use Codeberg or Sourcehut or literally anything that isn’t as hostile,but I said that a few times already and many team members seem not very open to that.

1 Like
5

The title does not matter. We will still have black helicopters above our heads covered with aluminum foil.

Facebook was founded with money from investment firms controlled by the CIA.
VK has money coming from investment firms controlled by Putin’s associates.
It really doesn’t matter what social platform you use, your data will end up in a CIA or FBS database.
What about the MSS? 90% of mobile games are created in China - where will all that collected data go?

Anyway, I agree with @nipos that the biggest threat currently is Microsoft. Google is still dangerous, and so is IBM/Red Hat.

1 Like
6

Jeez, the conspiracy and alu foil levels in this topic… people, be realistic. Whatever US government agency might be behind whatever service Haiku uses: they don’t give a shit about the project, the people using it and the people developing it. The market share of Haiku is insignificant and thus the people involved not interesting.
Please go back to reading some spy novels (or better: programming for Haiku).

7 Likes
7

Somebody did put in a Freedom of Information Request to find out what dealings the CIA might have had with Plan 9 From Bell Labs (another abandonware operating system, now being revived as 9Front). Maybe we should do the same for Haiku?

8

The original post was about the power of Google, not about the CIA/FBI.
And in my view, the OP was right to be worried. Five American corporations have aggregated power to themselves that is without parallel in human history. This is not a conspiracy theory; it’s fact. Microfoft’s revenues, as one example, are higher than the GDPs of most countries in the world.
At the very least, intelligent people should be aware of this, and concerned.

5 Likes
9

I think most intelligent people realize that a company’s large revenue stream doesn’t equal doom, gloom and danger to world peace per se. People believing in conspiracies (a certain person in a Russia comes to mind) on the other hand…

P.S. and yes, I am aware of the technical capabilities of the NSA, the CIA, etc. Read the books, seen the movies.

2 Likes
10

Yes.
And even more so considering that Haiku Inc. is registered in New York.

1 Like
11

My post was about facts, not conspiracy theories.
Before the Second World War, many intelligent people convinced themselves that it would never happen. Before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, most intelligent people convinced themselves that Putin wouldn’t do it. People are still buying ridiculously powerful cars because they have deluded themselves that sea levels aren’t rising, though they are.
People, even intelligent people, are capable of self-delusion.

1 Like
12

There are people clearly trying to take the focus off the technical aspect, focus on nonsense and troll with the term conspiracy.

Any country has agencies and will show interest in any project or devs to corrupt, it’s a fact!

13

Should Haiku sever ties with Google / the CIA?

Haiku have nothing to hide, it is open source already. No target to spy.

4 Likes
14

Can the Admins please lock / close this thread? It has become political, and this forum shouldn’t involve politics. There are millions of other places for that, and a single forum for Haiku.

2 Likes
15

I disagree. Whether we choose to take money from a given organisation is more to do with our values. We can discuss what we value, right?

I’m agnostic about taking money from Google, so long as we remain diverse in our support base.

2 Likes
16

It would be fun to ask whether they hindered the adoption of Be, back in the day. But then again, maybe not for us. 9Front revels in an aesthetic - one that seems happy to playfully reference “black helicopter” theories - that apparently intimidates some on this forum.

1 Like
17

I will not get into the political aspects of this - you think what you want about big tech.

On the technical side: if you fear that people may intrude in any way into your computer, I strongly suggest to pick something else than Haiku. We don’t do a good job of tracking vulnerabilities in ported software. We don’t do a good job of securing your data. Everything is running as the root account, so, basically, file permissions don’t exist. You have about the same level of security as Windows 98 era systems. Pick something better in that regard if this is a problem for you, for example, I think OpenBSD is focusing on these aspects.

14 Likes
18

I can’t really see anything off-topic that has “become” political. I also can’t see the original posters post, as far as I recall, it wasn’t political.

What political affiliation does Google have? And what do you mean by political? Political can mean we debate whether or not to bother developing for 68K macintoshes. But as long as nothing is partisan or pointed towards specific national candidates (while also being unrelated to Haiku), then I don’t think anyone here can complain. If it was that political, maybe don’t worry anyway and just move on. Let people discuss what they want to discuss. I don’t really care much about this discussion, not that I’m invested enough to disagree or agree, but I won’t worry about making sure moderators lock peoples technology related discussions.

As long as people keep it clean, aren’t harassing other members, and appropriately label their topic category, I think we should all be a bit more forgiving and let other people speak their mind.

4 Likes
19

Well, what happens if you let people randomly speak their mind you can see on basically any social media platform and in extreme form on things like 4chan (or whatever it´s current form is called today). Which is, in my opinion, a good thing, even though it’s often very disgusting to look at.
But this forum is specifically for discussions about Haiku. It is of course legitimate to want to discuss Haiku´s relationship with google, which is basically GSOC (correct me if I´m wrong). But the OP states a crazy conspiracy right at the beginning (Google = CIA project) as a given fact he doesn´t want to discuss. So what room for a meaningful discussion is there?

My own opinion on the original subject: Regardless what you think or feel about Google, I don´t see any negative impact that GSOC has on Haiku. On the contrary, we get code contributions and sometimes new contributors who continue to work on Haiku. I don´t see how this creates any dependency on Google. Let´s benefit from this project as long as it fits us.

7 Likes
20

The original post is fair enough. And I feel that it wasn’t worth flagging or asking to take down. Keeping people from posting their concerns about Google will only give more evidence for their idea, and shows that Haiku has been influenced already, by trying to cover it up. :wink:

But anyway, it’s hard to have any trust in an organization who dropped, “Don’t be evil.” As their motto.

1 Like